Winograd, Party of One?

Dem Club endorsements (0.00 / 0)

I'm looking forward to seeing who the Dem Clubs endorse. Any guesses about how many will go with the establishment electeds and how many will go for Bowen or Winograd? I'm hoping for (and even allowing myself to expect) a grassroots burst for Bowen.

Guess I still have San Francisco hippie values, although I'm an engineer

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by: caligal @ Sun Feb 27, 2011 at 20:52:31 PM UTC

One can hope (0.00 / 0)

Hahn has a huge headstart in this race - she clearly knew in advance Harman was going to resign. Part of her strategy is to create a "shock and awe" campaign by locking up every endorsement in the region.

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by: Marta Evry @ Mon Feb 28, 2011 at 06:12:10 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Sad commentary -- on the commentator (4.00 / 1)

Contrary to this post, there were about forty -- not a "dozen" -- Winograd supporters at the kickoff in Torrance.

As for the suggestion that this Torrance event somehow conflicted with the labor rally downtown, the gathering in Torrance began at 10 a.m., and was over in plenty of time for Winograd to arrive for the start of the labor rally, where she spoke (as Evry knows).  There is no one in this contest who has as profound and proven a commitment to the cause of organized labor as does Winograd, whose resume includes organizing for the United Farm Workers in the 1970s, as well as active membership in UTLA for the last decade and a half.  She, above Hahn and Bowen, had a right to speak on behalf of threatened public employees at that downtown rally.

And aside from Evry's evident animosity for this candidate (I'm her husband, btw), she offers no reason why Winograd should refrain from entering a race where she has run well before, whereas Bowen has done and could continue to do a fine job as SOS, and Hahn is already proving herself to be a cynic rather than the carrier of the kind of progressive voice and policy that the District needs and deserves.

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by: Buddyg @ Sun Feb 27, 2011 at 22:27:42 PM UTC

Re-read the post (1.00 / 1)

I did not say the total number of people attending your wife's rally numbered a dozen.  Frankly, I think just by looking at the photos people can judge for themselves the level of support.

Nor did I say Winograd missed the downtown rally to hold her own event.

In fact, if you go to my blog, you'll see a video posted that clearly shows all three candidates - your wife, Bowen and Hahn.

Here's the link: http://veniceforchange.blogspo...

As for the rest of your assertions, I don't expect to sway you. I've made my argument in the piece. Readers can, and already have in many cases, make up their own minds.

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by: Marta Evry @ Sun Feb 27, 2011 at 23:21:57 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

It'd be better to simply admit you underestimated rather (2.50 / 2)

than try to slice the baloney that thin.  You said that Marcy "kicked off her campaign with friends, family and about a dozen supporters on a windy sidewalk outside a Torrance, CA drugstore." You obviously were attempting to minimize the number of attendees (all of whom were supporters), or you were trying to break down the categories of attendees to create the same impression.  (Sort of like, "The labor rally was attended by friends, family, members and representatives of labor unions and fifteen supporters of labor", when the head count was in the thousands).  Whether or not the photos you've posted do it justice or allow for a true count, I was there and counted more than 40 people.   Your description clearly was on the low side, and I fear, not by accident.  

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by: Buddyg @ Mon Feb 28, 2011 at 03:51:14 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

You should be more worried about the 50K (1.00 / 1)

voters your wife will need to win the race than wether or not she can attract a dozen supporters (outside her circle of friends and family) to show up at a parking lot in Torrance.  

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by: Marta Evry @ Mon Feb 28, 2011 at 06:15:11 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Shades of the Harman campaign lies? (0.00 / 0)

I regret to see integrity is not an important part of your repertoire, as was the case when you supported Jane Harman.   Thanks for the free advice; I will take it FWIW.

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by: Buddyg @ Mon Feb 28, 2011 at 14:12:31 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I have no dog in this fight. (4.00 / 1)

But the title, the lead paragraph and the defense of same are misleading and disingenuous.   Just own it.  

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by: nslander @ Mon Feb 28, 2011 at 20:48:43 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

The premise, title and information in this post is descriptive, factual, and far from misleading. (4.50 / 2)

1) Winograd chose to have her campaign rally on the same day people were gathering to support of Wisconsin workers downtown. This was deliberate on her part to create an association between her campaign and  that rally. It is fair to point that out, and to use that association to compare the two events.

2) Winograd was only able to attract a handful of supporters beyond her immediate cadre of friends, family and campaign "staff" (don't know if anyone is even on payroll at this point). The steep drop off from her 2010 campaign kickoff is a tell.

3) Winograd will not have the institutional support from progressive organizations she had in 2010. She is widely seen as running a "spoiler" campaign which is likely to help Hahn and harm Bowen. In that regard, Winograd is very much a Party of One.

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by: Marta Evry @ Mon Feb 28, 2011 at 21:43:46 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

this is one reason why i was strongly against this primary system (8.00 / 1)

it creates an advantage to the party that can strong-arm candidates out of the race, and disadvantages those that let the voters decide. i liked the old system better.

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by: wu ming @ Sun Feb 27, 2011 at 23:05:00 PM UTC

Agreed (5.50 / 2)

The open primary was something Republicans wanted and pushed very hard to get. It advantages them, since they're better able to clear the field.

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by: Marta Evry @ Sun Feb 27, 2011 at 23:14:56 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Special Election vs Prop 14 (0.00 / 0)

Under new rules approved by voters last year, the CA36 race will be the first congressional election in California run as an "open primary".

I am sorry to harp on this, but please explain these results:

http://www.sos.ca.gov/election...

Jackie Speier's special election on April 8, 2008 -- before Prop 14 -- appears to have been run as an open primary.  Since CA36 will be the first in California, how did this happen?

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by: CaliforniaCondor @ Sun Feb 27, 2011 at 23:58:47 PM UTC

The old special system was weird (0.00 / 0)

Everybody ran together in the "primary", but if nobody got more than 50%, the top vote getters in each party moved on to the general election.

I think?

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by: Brian Leubitz @ Mon Feb 28, 2011 at 16:55:11 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Same system (0.00 / 0)

I am pretty sure this is the same system.  Prop 14 just moved a variant of it to the general election.

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by: CaliforniaCondor @ Mon Feb 28, 2011 at 18:50:28 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Open Primary (1.00 / 2)

Yeah! for the Open Primary.  Let's hope we can get more moderate Democrats.  Democrats who understand our country and our state are broke and that business is not evil, but a necessary component to a healthy economy and low unemployment, and that 100K+ compensation packages are way to rich for an average state worker and unsustainable for our state.

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by: John McDonald @ Mon Feb 28, 2011 at 06:00:51 AM UTC

It was the greed of Wall Street that's led us (0.00 / 0)

to the current doldrums, not the pay of public employees, who generally don't make more than their private sector counterparts, when controlling for education and job requirements.  Government is not evil, either; it provides safety, security, clean air, water and soil (that private business would simply pollute without government controls and regulation), law enforcement (including the laws which should govern fair economic competition), parks, prisons, world class education (when given proper resources, which we're not doing now).  Nor are unions evil, since without them we'd have a shrinking middle class and more income disparity -- both of which we have now, because businesses feel free and unfettered in their attacks on labor.  

Harman has not been a great Congresswoman, "moderate" (at best) though she was.

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by: Buddyg @ Mon Feb 28, 2011 at 06:13:34 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Government compensation lies (1.00 / 3)

Government workers make A LOT more than the private sectors.

I've become quite educated in all they ways they hide their earnings.

In my community -- let's see --
Office Manager
Salary $83,162
Cafeteria Plan $23,265 (taken as cash)
Deferred Comp $1,792
Car Allowance $6,420 (taken as cash, enough for a nice BWM)
UI $240
Retirement $29,806
OASDI $6,622
Mcare $1,662
Life $238
--------------
Total $153,216 ... and that doesn't count the 2x matching on the retirement benefit and it doesn't count an about 10% bump for accrued vacation // sick leave which they don't or can't take a fraction of because it is so generous.

General Manager
Salary $147,801
Cafe $23,265
Def Comp $8,038
Car $6,420
UI $463
Retire $49,997
OABDI $6,622
Mcare $2,785
Life $229
---------------
Total $245,560 and that doesn't count the 2x matching on the retirement benefit and it doesn't count an about 10% bump for accrued vacation // sick leave which they don't or can't take a fraction of because it is so generous.

Oh and my community only has 10,000 people, 3,000 home, and has a negative cash flow.

Also there are 13 employees, 7 are managers.

That's the reality ... all the other bunk about how great government workers are is just that.  They have found a way to rip the tax payers off, and they are doing it with gusto.

If you would like be to source the government document - I can - it as it is online.  Oh and they took 12 to 13% increases this past year!

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by: John McDonald @ Mon Feb 28, 2011 at 07:18:35 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Yes, source it. (0.00 / 0)

And show how it's both representative of government employees generally and unfair to your community.

For extra bonus points, explain how a community as small as yours got snookered by 13 presumably incompetent government employees.  One assumes that your elected representatives approved the hiring these people and approved the contract that gives them the salary and benefits that you're so incensed about.  Aren't there enough angry anti-government bigots like you in your town to make sure that a city of ten thousand only pays Wal-Mart wages, and all services are privately purchased by each individual?

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by: jsw @ Mon Feb 28, 2011 at 15:31:55 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Hi JSW (0.00 / 0)

Source

http://www.ci.mountainhouse.ca...

By the way we have 5 board members.  In the last election, two seats were up, and one board seat was taken because a lot of us were unaware of how outrageous all of this is.

Next election, we will have 3 good candidates running. :-)

So no we are not taking it.  One of the reasons these things are hard to correct is because the contracts are often 5+ years in the making and so angry citizens have to stay angry for a long time.  It takes quite a lot of passion and dedication away from your real life to battle people in government who can spend all of their time worrying about where their next rip off of the taxpayer is going to come from.

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by: John McDonald @ Tue Mar 01, 2011 at 03:06:36 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

I wish I got paid like that when I worked in state government, (0.00 / 0)

but I got nothing close to it.  I did know some people who left my agency to work in the private sector because the compensation was better, and I think their compensation looked a lot more like those figures.

This looks like a wacky local government, which, really, local people should be involved in reviewing.

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by: MikeD @ Mon Feb 28, 2011 at 16:25:07 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Two managers? (0.00 / 0)

Aside from sourcing it, which we'd like to see, and the fact that you have a pathetic, at best anecdotal crumb of information, it is wrong as a general matter.  See, e.g., http://www.epi.org/publication...

Second, is it self-evident that because someone's in six figures that he/she's overpaid?  

Finally, managers (and the miscreants who were stealing from the citizens of Bell) are usually NOT represented by unions, so whatever you want to say about the top salaries, they are not the result of union advocacy, which is just the patently pretextual excuse for Rethugs to try to finish the job Ronald Reagan started.  The unions, however, will not permit that to happen.  This is not about today's wage cutbacks and benefit concessions; it's about basic fundamental human right to have a voice in the workplace.  When the public sees that its parks, schools, law enforcement, libraries and basic environmental protections are threatened, they will support those basic rights.

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by: Buddyg @ Mon Feb 28, 2011 at 18:00:01 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Union vs. Non-union (0.00 / 0)

The folks I'm mentioning are not Union, but they are covered by MOUs that were matched to the union in San Joaquin County (at least that is what I'm told) ... I reviewed the San Joaquin County pay grades / benefits and it seems fairly close except for the car allowance and the most recent pay hikes.  The board members who supported their recent 12% increase say that they have threaten to unionize if they don't get their MOU agreed increases which is ~6% annually.  We told them to go for it.  However, we only have a single vote out of the 5.  We'll get our necessary votes in the next election.

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by: John McDonald @ Tue Mar 01, 2011 at 03:12:51 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

What I've learned (0.00 / 0)

The Gov salaries are generally okay and within the norms and usually all the hits the press.

Where the Government workers really take the taxpayers to the cleaners is in the retirement plans, health plans, car allowances, phones, double dipping, vacation accrual, sick leave accrual, unnecessary overtime, matching, etc.  When all that is taken into consideration, Government workers get paid way more than a comparable private sector worker.

Another scam that supporters of the 130K+ average compensation gov workers tried to pull was to compare their individual salaries to the household incomes of the area where I live which more often than not represents 2 incomes.

Honestly the best thing that came from the CA government shut down was that I get to work faster on those days.  So far, I have not seen one negative consequence to shutting the CA government down.  That's my honest opinion - I truly haven't seen any impact all, except the positive impact of less traffic on those days.

John

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by: John McDonald @ Tue Mar 01, 2011 at 03:23:36 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Paul Krugman gives the lie (5.00 / 1)

to the notion that government workers are generally overpaid compared to the private sector:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.c...

The next post explains that no, the pension shortfalls aren't the result of years of collective bargaining, but of the same bankster fraud that nailed the rest of us.

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by: Sofia @ Tue Mar 01, 2011 at 03:31:09 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

The study you mention and Paul Krugman (1.00 / 1)

1. The EPI study makes a huge error in the very first page.

Not all degrees are same.  Government degrees and Primary school teaching degrees are far less difficult degrees to earn as compared to Engineering, Chemistry, Physics, Software, etc.

Next, Universities, etc. are set up to allow government workers an easy path to obtain higher level degrees with far less stringent requirements, GPAs, and work requirements.

Next, In government you are paid more upon degree completion so there is a direct incentive to getting another degree.  What happens in the private sector when someone gets an MBA, a PhD, a Master's.  Oh, they get want I just wrote to an employee who got his Master's in Electrical Engineering.  "Congratulations"!

The higher degree thing is just another scam for government employees to inflate their salaries.

2. The study goes to say that they cannot find any evidence of higher pay.  Okay come to Mountain House, CA.  An office manager with 1 employee helping gets $150K+ in compensation.  The San Jose Police chief just got $300K for vacation accrual upon retirement and will make nearly $500K this year.  Apparently, they did not look very hard for evidence since this citizen only needs to start by looking at his own community and reading the newspaper.

3. I don't know any government workers make the wages or compensation listed in the study.  This data does not apply to California.  The data is being skewed by States that are being fiscally responsible to make the financial crazy states like California look less crazy.

4. Hours of work is another huge scam here: Private sector professionals don't get any over time pay, nor is it recorded.  So naturally, any comparison is going to skew in favor of the public sector worker who actually gets the overtime recorded.

Conclusion: Study is Bogus on many levels, and worse I believe it is intentionally so.

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by: John McDonald @ Tue Mar 01, 2011 at 15:18:26 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

5) Weak (4.00 / 1)

The study does NOT claim "they cannot find any evidence of higher pay."  It explicitly addresses respective AVERAGE wages:

"After an extensive search, we were unable to locate any
evidence showing that average government workers earn
$30,000 a year more than average private-sector workers,
nor could we find any recent studies that show public
employees earn 17% to 24% more than private-sector
employees."

Your local newspaper only reported those outliers because, well, they are outliers.  If the average CA public employee were making equal to or more than the private sector, one would expect one of the many billionaire funded think tanks would commission a study.  Failing that, corporate media simply over-exposes the inevitable crook caught with his hand in the till, or invents another "Welfare Queen" to ensure you guys continue to misplace your anger.

You also cannot rip out these national stats selectively and jam them into state context.  To the extent CA may exceed the national average, you conveniently ignore CA's relative cost of living and the fact the equivalent private sector job in CA is that much higher.

If you don't know any public employees who draw something close to those average incomes, you need to get out more.  I can introduce you to many teachers

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by: nslander @ Tue Mar 01, 2011 at 18:22:16 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Looking at Averages (1.00 / 1)

Well I just looked at the Cupertino School District Contract.

The AVERAGE 10 year Cupertino teacher (typically a teacher in their mid 30's) makes $69K to $74K.  The per capita income of Cupertino is ~$50K -- so teachers are way ahead.

The contract calls for only 187 days of work vs. 240 day for a normal worker. So let's normalize that ... $72K x 240/187 equals $92.4K.

The contract calls for only 31.25 hours of work per week vs. 40+ for normal workers, and 50+ for tech workers.  So let's normalize that $92.4K x 40/31.25 = $118K.

The contract calls for 2 weeks of sick leave per year.  Get this: use you need 5 months AT full pay.  Oh, and 7 days for personal business.  5 months sick leave and 7 personal business days don't exist in the private sector.  And no, this is not long term disability, bereavement leave, etc. that is all extra.  So the 187 days is actually 180.  So let's normalize that.  $118K x 187/180 = $122.5K

1 year sabbatical after 7 years at 50% pay.  Doesn't exist in the private sector.  Normalizing $122.5K x 7/6.5 = $132K

Jury duty, etc. pays at 100% salary.  Doesn't exist in most private sector jobs.

Special leaves to run for office, if you are elected, are a union officer, have union business, go to other educational institutions and programs.  And you get all the seniority if you do any of that when you return.  Doesn't exist in the private sector.

Limited drug and alcohol testing - Imagine that the folks who teach are kids are concerned about limiting their drug testing!  Doesn't exist in the private sector.

And you get to retire at 55 vs. 68+ in the private sector.  And if you work part time you still get full time benefits and they pay about 50% less towards medical than the private sector worker.  And their medical benefits are far better.

We have even got into the pensions yet!  I can source every single comment, as the contracts are on-line.

I offer a challenge to anyone in CA to find any district where the 10 year teacher salary is lower than the per capita income of the district.  I offer a challenge to anyone in CA to find a district where the teacher salary is less than 2X the per capita income of the district when normalized for days worked, personal business time off, paid sabbaticals, limited work week hours.

Cupertino has one of the highest per capita incomes in the state and is why I choose it -- most other districts will have a larger difference vs. the private sector.

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by: John McDonald @ Wed Mar 02, 2011 at 15:27:30 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

You didn't feel it because you are not aged, sick, or a child (5.00 / 1)

Just because something did not affect you personally didn't mean it didn't have effects.  

One of the problems in modern America is selfishness.

School days have been reduced. Class sizes have enlarged. Parks and libraries have been reduced or closed. The sick and aged have had their meager assistance drastically reduced.

Perhaps you are fortunate not to be vulnerable. But maybe one day you will need help and it will not be there.

Instead somebody will write in a blog that it doesn't effect them so what is the problem.

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by: dgdavidgreene @ Tue Mar 01, 2011 at 17:53:04 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Why does Marta hate Marcy Winograd? (3.00 / 2)

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by: Kim Kaufman @ Mon Feb 28, 2011 at 07:43:05 AM UTC